Continuing a deluge of executive actions, President Biden last week ordered the Justice Department to step back from its partnership with the private prison industry. Inside the Justice Department, the U.S. Marshals Service and federal Bureau of Prisons run large prison networks, both of which contract with private prisons corporations to house people suspected or convicted of migrating to the United States in violation of federal criminal law. On January 26, the president announced that the Justice Department “shall not renew…contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities, [...]
Expedited removal & 287(g) survive Biden review, so far
Yesterday, President Biden continued the swirl of executive actions altering immigration policy with highly anticipated announcements about the Trump administration’s infamous family-separation policy and asylum processing. Tucked into yesterday’s orders are important possibilities for immigration policing. Regrettably, when it comes to key features of the Trump administration’s immigration policing practices, President Biden’s latest announcements are short on anything more than possibilities. In an easy to overlook segment of his Executive Order on Creating a Comprehensive Regional [...]
Federal court blocks deportation pause
A federal court in Texas blocked the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to pause removals for 100 days pending a review of enforcement practices. Texas v. United States, No. 6:21-cv-00003 (S.D. Tex. January 26, 2021). Handing a major win to the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, Trump appointee Drew Tipton granted a temporary restraining order blocking DHS from implementing the 100-day deportation pause. The TRO applies for 14 days. An appeal is likely. As a preliminary matter, the court found that Texas has standing to sue because it provided evidence “of damage to its public fisc by [...]
Biden-Harris immigration priorities signal big shift, raise many questions
Late yesterday, the Biden-Harris administration ended its first day in office signaling that campaign promises to restructure immigration policy were more than empty words. In a series of executive actions signed by President Biden and a memo issued by the temporary head of the Department of Homeland Security, the incoming administration announced a 100-day pause on removals and new enforcement priorities. President Biden set the stage for the new administration’s meaningful immigration policy shift by rescinding his predecessor’s own prioritization scheme. Making good on a campaign [...]
Biden’s Migration Policy Options
After four years of President Donald J. Trump’s virulent rhetorical attacks on migrants and his administration’s heavy-handed policies, the United States is on the verge of experiencing multiple shifts in the politics of migration and its policies toward migrants. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris reject the abrasive, racist rhetoric that propelled President Trump into office and which he embraced throughout his tenure. But while the new administration is sure to adopt a dramatically different tenor toward migrants, there remain important questions about the [...]
Migrating to Prison, one year later
After arriving in the United States in October 2015 with his mother Wendy hoping to find safe harbor, one-year-old Diego was quickly moved to an immigration prison in Pennsylvania. Six hundred fifty days later, Diego and Wendy were still there. “Diego’s situation is alarming, but it’s not unique,” I wrote in Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. Less than two months from Inauguration Day, change is in the air. Just as winter’s bareness recently overtook fall’s bright colors, Biden’s calm humanity will soon replace Trump’s selfish abrasiveness. One year after [...]
With Biden returning to White House, private prison stock falls
As the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election began pointing toward a Biden-Harris administration, private prison companies took a financial hit. Over a few days, CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies in the United States, saw their stock prices drop substantially. Both companies had benefited from the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies. Noticias Telemundo. November 7, 2020. In just a few days, though, investors seem to have grown concerned about the future of the private prison industry under a Biden presidency. From November 3 to [...]
New York Review of Books
Two weeks before a referendum on the extraordinary presidency of Donald J. Trump, it's easy to imagine that everything that the U.S. government has done under his watch has been new and innovative in its destructiveness. But "in Migrating to Prison César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández shows that the machinery of separation has long stretched deep into the interior, consisting of a vast network of immigrant detention centers that now reach almost every state in the nation," Francisco Cantú writes in the New York Review of Books. Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River, reveals how present-day [...]